PUBLISHER'S LETTER
BOLD IDEA ALSO LAUNCHED SPACE COAST
It began with a bold idea.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress on May
25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the
ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon
by the end of the decade. The announcement came just six
weeks after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first
human in space and four years after the Soviet Union shocked
and embarrassed the United States by launching Sputnik, the
Earth’s first artificial satellite.
The advances, made during the tension-filled Cold War arms
race, stoked fears that the U.S. had fallen behind in developing
new technology.
A few months after Kennedy’s announcement, NASA began
acquiring land on Merritt Island to support the Apollo Lunar
Landing program. On July 1, 1962, exactly 60 years ago, NASA activated the site as its Launch Operations
Center. In September 1962, in a speech at Rice Stadium in Texas, Kennedy uttered the now-famous words,
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because
they are hard.’’
Kennedy would be assassinated a year later before his dream could be filled, but his successor, Lyndon B.
Johnson, named the Launch Operations Center the John. F. Kennedy Space Center just seven days after
Kennedy’s death.
Ever since, KSC and the Space Coast have been center stage in human space exploration. Kennedy’s dream
was achieved July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11, manned by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin,
landed on the moon – before the end of the decade.
While the creation of the Kennedy Space Center and the Apollo mission clearly put the U.S. in the lead in
the space race, it also had a profound effect close to home. Brevard County, which attracted the best and the
brightest to the space program, became known as the Space Coast, sporting an incredibly robust economy.
NASA says Kennedy Space Center generates more than $5.2 billion for Florida’s economy annually through
the employment of more than 12,000 government and contract workers. In all, NASA says the Kennedy
Space Center supports more than 27,000 jobs in Central Florida.
And to think it all happened because of the idea of sending a man to the moon.
President John F. Kennedy announced his goal of
sending a man to the moon by 1970 before a joint
session of Congress on May 25, 1961. His dream
was fulfilled eight years later when the Apollo 11
mission landed on the moon.
Signatures:Signatures 2/25/13 4:25 PM Page 1
SUMMER 2022 #scliving spacecoast_living_mag spacecoastliving
CALL
772.940.9005
SEND AN EMAIL
enns@spacecoastliving.com
FOLLOW US
6: SPACE COAST LIVING | SPACECOASTLIVING.COM
LET’S TALK
Gregory Enns
Associate
/SPACECOASTLIVING.COM
link